The Fourth Tenant

It began, as these things often do, with a small, unremarkable anomaly. My wife, Elena, and I had been renting the ground-floor flat of a Victorian house in the quiet coastal town of Saltmarsh for nearly a year. The building had been converted into three flats, and the top-floor tenant, an elderly gentleman named Mr. Ashworth, kept to himself. The basement flat was empty, its windows perpetually grimy, and we heard the occasional scuttle of mice or the groan of old pipes. We were used to the house’s quirks—the way the stairs creaked even when no one was on them, the draft that snaked through the hallway on still days. But then Mrs. Bell, our neighbor from the other ground-floor flat, began to act strangely.

Mrs. Bell was a retired librarian in her late seventies, a woman of strict routines. She would water her small garden of marigolds every morning at nine, walk her ancient corgi, Pudding, at noon, and have tea with her daughter every Tuesday. But one Tuesday, Elena noticed Mrs. Bell standing in the hallway, staring at the basement door, her body rigid. When Elena asked if she was alright, Mrs. Bell turned with a start and said she thought she’d seen a man in a long coat slip through the door. There was no one there. We dismissed it as a trick of the light, but the following week, the pattern repeated. Mrs. Bell insisted she had heard footsteps in the basement late at night, and once, she claimed the door had been slightly ajar, though she had locked it herself. Her daughter, Margaret, confided in Elena that her mother had been ‘forgetful’ lately, maybe even showing early signs of dementia. We felt sorry for her, but life went on.

Then came the cat. Ours was a sleek black tom named Nero, notorious for his skittishness. He’d dart under the sofa at the slightest noise, and only Elena could coax him out. One evening, as we were watching the news, Nero padded into the living room from the hallway, his tail high, and did something we’d never seen before. He walked to the center of the room, sat down, and looked at us, his yellow eyes unwavering. Then he turned his head toward the basement door, which was visible from the sofa, and let out a low, guttural hiss. The hair on his back stood up, and he crept closer to the door, sniffing at the crack. When Elena called him, he didn’t come. He just sat there, staring, and then let out a mournful yowl, followed by an unsettling quiet. He finally came to us, but he kept glancing back over his shoulder.

A few nights later, we were in bed when we heard the basement door–which was locked with a bolt from our side–slowly creak open. We froze. The sound was unmistakable: the groan of old hinges. But when Elena went to check, the bolt was still in place, and the door was shut. Yet, the next morning, Mrs. Bell was waiting for us in the hallway, her face pale. She said she had heard knocking from inside the basement wall all night, rhythmic, like a pulse. She had called out, but the knocking only grew louder. Elena and I exchanged glances. We had heard nothing. Mrs. Bell began to cry, saying she wasn’t losing her mind; she knew what she heard. That afternoon, I decided to investigate the basement. I’d never been down there, but I found the key to the basement flat in a drawer in the communal kitchen. The basement was accessed by a narrow, spiraling stone staircase that smelled of damp earth and age. I descended warily, holding a flashlight. The basement flat was a single room with a low ceiling, bare brick walls, and a dirt floor. It was empty except for a few broken chairs and a rusted iron bed frame in the corner. As I shone the light around, I noticed a door in the far wall that I hadn’t seen before. It was padlocked. The padlock was old and rusted, but the latch was clean, as if recently oiled.

I felt a chill run down my spine, and I had the overwhelming feeling that I was not alone. I turned to leave, and that’s when I saw what I had missed on my way in: a small, framed photograph on the floor near the bed. I picked it up. The glass was cracked, and the picture was yellowed, but I could make out a family: a young couple and a child, perhaps five years old, standing in front of a house. Something about the child’s eyes made me drop the photo. They were too wide, too dark, and seemed to follow me. I rushed back upstairs, locking the basement door behind me. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, and around 3 AM, I felt a presence at the foot of our bed. I opened my eyes, and through the darkness, I saw a tall, thin silhouette, featureless, just a darker patch against the night. It stood perfectly still. I didn’t dare move. I reached out to nudge Elena, but my hand passed through empty air. She wasn’t there. In a panic, I switched on the lamp. Elena was asleep in the bathroom, having had a bad dream. She said she had dreamed of a child crying beneath the floorboards.

The next morning, Mrs. Bell didn’t answer her door. We knocked, and when there was no response, I forced the lock. The flat was neat, but the phone was off the hook, and the television was hissing static. We found her in the bedroom, sitting in a chair, staring at the wall. She was muttering to herself. When we got closer, we heard her say, ‘The fourth tenant. He’s come back.’ She couldn’t explain what she meant. She only repeated that the house had always had four tenants, and that the fourth one liked to ‘walk the walls.’ We called Margaret, who came and took her mother away. Elena and I talked it over. We considered moving, but we had a lease, and we weren’t the sort to be scared off by an old woman’s senile ramblings. But we were scared, more than we admitted.

A week after Mrs. Bell left, I came home from work to find Elena in the kitchen, white as a sheet. She handed me a stack of old newspapers she had found in the attic. One headline from 1962 read: ‘Child Missing for Three Days, Found in Basement.’ The article described a five-year-old boy named Thomas Whitaker who had vanished from the house and was found in a locked room in the basement, dehydrated and terrified. He claimed ‘the man in the long coat’ had taken him. The man was never found. The child was sent to live with relatives, and his family moved away. Another article, from 1982, told of a transient who had rented the basement, and who had been found dead of a heart attack, with a look of terror on his face. The door had been locked from the inside.

We were horrified, and we decided to leave. We packed our bags and spent the night at my sister’s house. The next day, we returned to gather the rest of our things. As I went into the bedroom, I felt a cold draft from the closet. I opened the door. There, scrawled on the back wall in what looked like dark, dried paint, was a message: ‘I REMEMBER YOU.’ The handwriting was childlike. I backed away, my heart racing. Elena appeared behind me, and she gasped. She pointed to the floor. Nero was there, on his back, his body stiff and cold. He was dead. There was no mark on him, but his eyes were wide and staring, as if he had seen something unspeakable.

We fled. We broke our lease and moved across the country to a small apartment in Liverpool. We never spoke of it. But as I write this, three years later, I can still smell that damp earth. And last night, Elena woke up screaming. She said she saw a man in a long coat standing at the foot of our bed, and he was holding a child’s hand. In the darkness, she said the child had no face. I try to tell myself it was a nightmare. But as I finish these words, I look at the door to our flat. It’s open a crack. We didn’t open it. And from behind the door, I hear the soft, rhythmic sound of a child knocking.